8

 

NY Daily News

New York City’s post-pandemic recovery has slowed as just a small fraction of Manhattan’s office workers have returned to work in-person, according to a survey published Monday.

The findings — compiled by the Partnership for New York City, which represents the Big Apple’s largest employers — estimated 62% of Manhattan’s office employees worked remotely during a typical weekday in late April. And just 8% — or one in 12 — showed up to work in-person five days per week, the report shows.

“The longer people worked remotely, the longer they wanted to continue to work remotely,” said Kathy Wylde, the CEO of the Partnership for New York City. “It’s called inertia. The longer people are doing one thing, the harder it is to get them to change.”

It’s a far more sluggish return to in-person work than the organization projected before the omicron variant of COVID-19 first swept through the city. A survey conducted in late October found nearly half of Manhattan’s office workers expected to be in the office by the end of January.

Predictions of a return to normalcy have proved inaccurate for more than a year. A March 2021 survey found employers expected about half of the borough’s office workers to be back in-person by last September.

About 78% of the city’s major employers expect a combination of remote and in-person work is here to stay, the survey found.

 

Man steals tow truck and kills a woman with it

 

NY Post

Police are hunting “a person of interest” in the horrific Mother’s Day mow-down of a Queens mom, law-enforcement sources told The Post on Monday.

Detectives have a photo of the man they suspect stole a heavy truck and slammed it into 49-year-old Florence Ngwu as he fled, leaving her mortally injured on the pavement outside her home Sunday morning, sources said.

As Ngwu lay dying on the ground, her young daughter screamed, “Mommy! Mommy!” video shows.

Ngwu, a mother of four and a nurse at an area nursing home, clung to life with massive head injuries until she died early Monday at Jamaica Hospital, her shattered family said.

The victim’s older daughter, Princess Ngwu, told The Post on Monday that while the family is glad that cops have identified her mom’s suspected killer, “What’s done is done.

“We can’t bring her back,” Princess said. “It doesn’t really change anything.

“It’s tragic what happened, but it is what it is,” she added. ” We’re OK. She trained us all very well. We were her life — her kids, her husband.”

Princess said she wants her mother to be remembered “as a strong woman.”

“She was a fierce woman, the fiercest woman you’ll ever meet,” she said. “All she ever did was just work, come home, care for us.”

NYPD city employee shot to death in her apartment, neighbor also shot and wounded in same building in Ridgewood

Queens Post

One woman is dead and another is critically injured after being shot in Ridgewood Monday morning.

The shootings stemmed from a domestic dispute between a 51-year-old woman and her boyfriend, 55, while they were inside a third-floor apartment at 66-17 Fresh Pond Rd., according to the NYPD.

The dispute took place at around 8:15 a.m. and the woman was fatally shot in the head by her boyfriend, according to police.

A 49-year-old neighbor, who lives on the second floor of the three-story building, heard the gunfire and went to the woman’s assistance but was fired upon by the suspect, according to Deputy Chief Julie Morrill, who gave a press briefing at the scene.

The neighbor then fled back to her apartment but was followed by the suspect, Morrill said. She was then shot in the abdomen and the shoulder, police said.

“There are shell casings throughout the hallway and stairwell,” Morrill said.

NY Daily News 

 

An NYPD civilian employee was shot in her Queens apartment Monday morning and later died, police said.

The suspect, a 55-year-old man believed to have a romantic connection to the 51-year-old victim, fled the scene but not before shooting and badly wounding a neighbor who heard the commotion and ran to see what had happened, police said.

Hotel homeless shelter in Queens tied to agent of the city community affairs commissioner

  

THE CITY

For months on end last year, residents protesting a planned homeless shelter in Queens struggled to get somebody — anybody — at Mayor Bill de Blasio’s City Hall to hear their argument that enough was enough.

The neighborhoods of Queens Community Board 3 — covering East Elmhurst, Jackson Heights and North Corona — already hosted four shelters, and several hotels within the district were temporarily housing homeless individuals during the pandemic.

Behind the scenes, LGA Hospitality LLC, the owners of the property, fought back, hiring a politically wired lobbyist firm, James Capalino Associates, to move the project along, obtain all required permits and roll over local resistance.

Today the shelter, located at 112-16 Astoria Boulevard near LaGuardia Airport, is scheduled to open soon, but local leaders are now hoping for a more sympathetic ear from de Blasio’s successor, Mayor Eric Adams. As Queens Community Board 3 Chairperson Frank Taylor put it, “We’re happy to have the new administration and we’re hopeful.”

There might be a problem with that.

The key portal to City Hall for neighborhood residents is the Mayor’s Community Affairs Unit (CAU), the division within the Mayor’s Office that helps citizens and community boards navigate the city’s bureaucracy. CB3 worked with de Blasio’s CAU on the shelter issue and planned to do so with Adams’ team.

In January, however, Mayor Adams named as his new commissioner of CAU Fred Kreizman — one of the lobbyists who had been retained by the shelter builder, LGA Hospitality LLC, to seek support from City Hall.

“Wow,” Taylor said when told of Kreizman’s dual roles. “Anytime we’re going into these things, we’re apprehensive because of what has happened. We’ve not been listened to. The only thing we can do is that this administration, if that gentleman has that type of connection, what else can we do but fight? And let the community know why are Black and brown neighborhoods being overburdened with these shelters?”

Neponsit hospital will finally be demolished for a park and LGBTQ community is pissed

 

THE CITY 

 A city plan to demolish a long-abandoned hospital and nursing home in the Rockaways has drawn scrutiny from all sides — including those who want the building to stay up to protect a historic beach haven for New York’s queer community.

The public hospitals agency announced last month that three crumbling buildings comprising the former Neponsit Adult Home on Beach 149th Street would be torn down at the end of the summer season. The land would then be turned over to the Department of Parks and Recreation, and eventually be home to a park, with space for lifeguard facilities and parking, officials said.

“It’s been a community eyesore for a long time, and there really wasn’t a good plan for it for a very long time,” local City Councilmember Joann Ariola (R-Queens) told THE CITY. “I think it’s going to be a positive addition to the community.”

But those who flock to the sands behind the seaside building — including a historically Black and brown community of trans and queer beachgoers, and some nudists — fear tearing down the edifieces that acted as a shield will ruin their “utopia.”

The former hospital’s fence directly borders the beach, where beachgoers have built a monument to the late Ms. Colombia, a beloved NYC queer icon whose legacy they’ve celebrated each year since she died in 2018.

LGBTQ New Yorkers have congregated at Bay 1 — the first beach in the federally operated Jacob Riis Park — since the late 1950s, according to historians. Queer authors including Audre Lorde and Joan Nestle mention the beach by name as a safe haven in their works.

 Many in the community now believe tearing down the hospital and putting in a park where children play would make Bay 1 less of a safe space.

“There are so many places in New York City that we are not comfortable in. Riis is our home, our dance floor, our marriage place and our burial ground,” Ceyenne Doroshow, founder and executive director of Gays and Lesbians Living in a Transgender Society, or GLITS, told THE CITY.

Consternation about city bus transportation

QNS 

Residents of Community District 5 heard a local breakdown of the new Queens Bus Network Redesign, with some locals expressing their concerns over the proposed plan during Wednesday night’s virtual workshop hosted by the MTA.

The May 4 workshop is part of the MTA’s three-month-long public feedback period before the agency finalizing the proposal. 

The MTA released a new draft plan for the Queens bus network in March after halting the 2019 project at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The revision offers a total of 85 routes for the borough, with 20 new routes and other extensions, shortenings and consolidations to improve efficiency; there are currently 82 bus routes in Queens. The plan will take away a total of 1,685 stops.

In an effort to shorten the commuting time, the MTA wants to space stops further apart, from about 850 feet to 1,400 feet. This could save 20 seconds of travel per stop, according to officials.

The new bus route is focused on reliable service and faster travel, according to the MTA representatives presenting the plan during Wednesday night’s virtual workshop. However, some residents who live in the district — which covers Ridgewood, Glendale, Middle Village and Maspeth — argued that some of the adjustments will completely upend their commute.  

One resident, Melissa Ferrara, mentioned that she chose to send her kids to McClancy Memorial High School in Elmhurst because the Q47 provides a simple commute with no transfers.

“Rerouting this will cause them to take two to three buses which will add tremendously to their commute,” Ferrara said. 

The proposed Q47 routing would be realigned at its southern end to serve 69 Street in Maspeth instead of 80 Street. It would also terminate at Metropolitan Avenue and Fresh Pond Road, serving the M Train at the Middle Village Station.

MTA Representative Ryan Zatlin said that some proposed bus routes will deviate from typical routes and make “specialized school trips.”

“This proposal to realign the route to 69th Street was around our strategies of straightening routes and providing direct connections, in this case to the M Train and Metropolitan Avenue,” Zatlin said. “However, the proposal may not satisfy the needs of everyone, and that’s what we wanted to hear today.”

Pop up party pooper

Queens Chronicle 

 

With summer around the corner, Councilman Bob Holden (D-Middle Village) is asking his colleagues to help him crash some parties — specifically, the increasingly popular pop-up parties that began to proliferate in his district and others last year.

The parties led to numerous complaints from residents — as well as a pair of shootings.

Holden last week introduced a dozen bills aimed at quality-of-life issues. One, Intro. 248, specifically targets organizers of parties, or in some cases the building owners, when vacant storefronts host gatherings without following city regulations or commonsense precautions.

Last summer the old Midville Hardware location at 73-02 Metropolitan Ave. in Middle Village became a host of such parties multiple times. Sites also sprang up on Myrtle Avenue and other nearby sites.

“It would allow the city to place regulations on event spaces that do not have a certificate of assembly, while avoiding any burdensome regulations on legitimate businesses,” Holden said in an interview this week.

“If they don’t have a certificate of assembly and suddenly they’re selling drinks, alcohol or no alcohol, they will be deemed immediately not in compliance,” Holden said.

He added that things like failure to have a liquor license or having unlicensed security guards also could be found to be a violation. Fines, the councilman said, could range from $1,000 to $25,000 depending on the number and severity of infractions.

It, and most of the other bills on Holden’s list, have been co-sponsored by Councilman Kalman Yeger (D-Brooklyn).

“He’s another member of the Common Sense Caucus,” Holden said.

Middle Village residents who feared to give their names last summer gave the Chronicle stark descriptions of what the parties could bring when the revelry or worse spilled out onto the streets during such parties.

Music and loud partying into all hours of the morning were not even the worst. Fights would spill out into the streets. Litter and refuse would cover sidewalks.

Original efforts to crack down on businesses and building owners through the State Liquor Authority and zoning regulations would have had unintended consequences for bars, delis and other legitimate businesses that were playing by the rules on the same block, according to Holden.

He said his bill goes first after the party organizers or those who rent the space.

“If we go in there and people say that person is unavailable, or if someone has no ID, we could fine the building owner,” he said

Elected officials having a DSA rave at Glendale niteclub

 

 

Nowadays, Queens's infamous superfund site adjacent nite club, is holding an event with our favorite infamous fauxgressive and agency captured lawmakers (and future ones too) tonight. Should be a really fun show considering the "headliner" Emily Gallagher. Maybe some folks can ask her about her ally's, who happens to be on her district's community board, vitriolic bigoted rage against immigrant Polish home owners.

The rents are too damn higher by train stations

 

Queens Post 

 The rental market has bounced back—with apartments located within a half mile of a subway station coming back with vigor.

The real estate firm RentHop released a report earlier this week that found that the median rent paid for a 1-bedroom apartment has jumped significantly for those located near subway stations.

The report, which focused solely on 1-bedroom apartments, revealed that the jump was particularly noticeable by major station hubs and near stations where there has been an increase in luxury housing development.

For instance, the median rent paid for a 1-bedroom unit by the Queensboro Plaza station during the first quarter (Jan. 1—March 31) was $3,390, up 28 percent from the first quarter of 2021. The median rent paid for a 1-bedroom unit near the 36^th Street station (E-M-R) during the first quarter was $2,658, up 29 percent from first quarter 2021.

The proximity of the stations to two new developments played a role in driving up prices, according to the report. The stations are near Sven, a 71-story tower located at 29-59 Northern Blvd, and Rise LIC, a 10-story building at 29-17 40th Ave.

The report noted that across the city rents have “skyrocketed at major subway stops,” with pandemic concessions vanishing and gross rents soaring. For instance, at the 72^nd Street in Manhattan the median rent paid for a one-bedroom is up 30 percent year-over-year, to $3,495 during the first quarter.

“When the pandemic first hit New York City, residents fled in droves,” the report says. “Two years into the pandemic, many have returned to the city [and] rental prices have recovered well beyond the pre-pandemic levels.”

RentHop released data showing the median amount paid for a 1 bedroom at each station, as well as the increase.

 

 

The stabilized rent is too damn higher

 

 

NY Post

A vote by the city’s Rent Guidelines Board on Thursday set the stage for what could be the biggest rent hikes in a decade for the Big Apple’s nearly 1 million rent-controlled apartments.

In a preliminary 5-4 vote, the board approved rent increases in the range of 2 to 4 percent for one-year leases and 4 to 6 percent for two-year leases.

If the board’s final vote falls within those ranges, they’d account for the largest hikes since 2013, when the board under then-Mayor Mike Bloomberg approved 4 percent increases for one-year leases and 7.75 percent for two-year leases.

The range set was not as large as some tenant advocates feared or landlord groups were hoping for — after a board report estimated owners would need increases of up to 9 percent on two-year leases to make costs.

But the Legal Aid Society is still pushing for a “wholesale freeze” when the board makes its final vote next month, the group said in a statement.

“We condemn the Board for voting to increase rents on some of our most vulnerable neighbors, people from low-income communities of color, especially when New Yorkers are still reeling financially from the pandemic and the local unemployment rate remains one of the highest in the country,” said Adriene Holder, attorney-in-charge of the civil practice.

 

Another woman murdered in her house in Queens

 

QNS

 

A woman was shot and killed inside an Ozone Park home on Wednesday afternoon.

Police from the 106th Precinct in Ozone Park answered a 911 call regarding the shooting at 94-59 109th Ave., one block east of Cross Bay Boulevard just before 2:30 p.m. on May 4. Upon their arrival, officers discovered the woman inside the two-story brick home unconscious and unresponsive with a single gunshot wound to her head, an NYPD spokesman said.

 The NYPD released surveillance images of the man who was wearing a light-colored hooded jacket, a dark baseball cap, white pants and dark sneakers.

Update: Suspect turns himself in.

NY Post

The mother of an NYPD officer was fatally shot at her Queens home on Wednesday afternoon after answering her door – and her alleged killer surrendered to police about an hour later, authorities said.

Anna Torres, 51, was shot twice, including in the head, by a gunman who drew her to the door of her two-story single-family home at 94-59 109th Ave. in Ozone Park at about 2:30 p.m., cops said.

Torres was pronounced dead on scene. Two of her relatives were inside the home at the time of the fatal shooting, NYPD Deputy Chief Jerry O’Sullivan said at a Wednesday night press conference.

 The suspect in Torres’ death, Giuseppe Canzani, 41, fled the scene after the shooting in black Chevy Traverse.

Shortly before 3:30 p.m.,Canzani pulled up to the 106th Precinct in the same vehicle before exiting and placing a .45-caliber silver firearm on the sidewalk, O’Sullivan said.

Eric Ulrich is commissioner of the Department of Buildings

 

NY Post

Mayor Eric Adams on Tuesday named an ex-City Councilman as his Buildings Commissioner and an ally of disgraced state lawmaker Hiram Monserrate to be the Big Apple’s next sheriff.

The two appointments came as Hizzoner traveled to California for a technology-related conference.

The new buildings chief, Eric Ulrich, was first elected to represent Queens at City Hall in a February 2009 special election and departed last year under the term limits law.

Adams initially hired him in January as a senior adviser, where he helped vet candidates for other key positions in the administration.

 

99 and a half will do and more

NY Post 

It’s good to be the Mayor!

Eric Adams’ office made out the best among the Big Apple’s more than two dozen major city agencies, scoring a 25 percent bump in his recently unveiled $99.7 billion city budget proposal, a Post analysis found.

Adams has requested $204 million for his 1,400-strong executive operation, up from the $163 million de Blasio allotted to his office during his final year running the city.

“One of the easy criticisms of the de Blasio administration was growing the Mayor’s Office budget,” said Council Minority Leader Joe Borelli (R-Staten Island). “Everyone can see litter in the street and understand the need for more sanitation workers, so what’s the plainly obvious reason for this?”

Most of the $41 million boost is dedicated to a major expansion of the division of the Mayor’s Office of Contract Services, which reviews spending agreements and tracks vendor performance.

Adams’ budget would increase MOCS’s budget from $26.5 million to $59 million and add another 47 employees, expanding its headcount from 197 to 244 employees.

Kathy Clown racial profiles new LG pick

 

NY Post 

Hours after signing a bill that she lobbied Albany Democrats to pass — legislation allowing her to boot her indicted running mate Brian Benjamin from the primary ballot — Gov. Kathy Hochul on Tuesday announced his replacement, Rep. Antonio Delgado, as New York’s next lieutenant governor. 

Hochul acknowledged Delgado’s selection was preceded by a “difficult couple of weeks” as she introduced the Democratic lawmaker at a press conference as her new No. 2 — a choice that will remove the Schenectady native from a competitive swing district House race as Democrats try to hold onto their razor-thin congressional majority in the midterm elections. 

“I believe that New Yorkers deserve a government that is fully staffed, fully functioning and fully committed to delivering for New Yorkers,” she told reporters in Albany, alluding to Benjamin’s recent resignation. “They deserve a government to work around the clock relentlessly to deliver results. They deserve a government that is laser focused on leading New York’s next great comeback and building a brighter, better future, a more equitable future for every New Yorker.”

“To do that, I need someone by my side who I can rely on for wisdom, guidance and advice,” the governor added. “I’m really proud to say I found that person.”

“I know we got it right,” Hochul said of the second time she has chosen a lieutenant governor, following the “rushed” vetting process that ended in her missing previously reported red flags on Benjamin. 

City contractor insurance company stiffs homeowners following reckless infrastructure repairs

 

QNS

After a major construction project along 74th Street and Penelope Avenue in Middle Village damaged multiple people’s property, local residents are calling on the city to look into why some homeowners were compensated and others were not. 

Construction began in 2016 to improve stormwater drainage and upgrade the city’s infrastructure system. The $32 million project, contracted by CAC Industries Inc., consisted of replacing the water main, reconstructing sewers, installing catch basins, manholes, sidewalks, roadways and more.  

The liability insurer for CAC Industries, Travelers, settled 11 claims from homeowners concerned about property damage after construction ended in 2020. However, an additional 13 claims were denied, leaving homeowners with thousands of dollars in damages that many cannot afford. 

Councilman Robert Holden got involved and sent a letter to the Department of Design and Constriction (NYC DDC), which previously oversaw the construction, to ask them to audit the project.

“My constituents deserve more transparency and an understanding as to what evidence was used in denying or approving the claims of homeowners,” Holden said. “Auditing the 74th Street sewer project will not only be useful to the homeowners who suffered property damage but will also help ensure future projects are conducted more responsibly.”

A DDC spokesperson told QNS that they plan to respond to Holden’s letter after reviewing the project and subsequent claims. 

One resident, Danny O’Neill, was previously compensated for damage to his water heater but denied payment for cracks sustained to the front stoop and his home’s foundation.

“There was massive machinery here every day, pounding the ground over and over again. Our houses were rattling and shaking,” O’Neill said. 

After incessant pounding, O’Neills water heater burst. CAC Industries took responsibility and O’Neill was compensated $1,000 for a new water heater. However, O’Neill’s damaged front stoop, only a few feet away from the construction, was not covered.

De Facto borough tower jail

THE CITY 

One Saturday last May, an elderly man stood on the sidewalk outside a Maspeth Federal Savings Bank branch on a quiet block in Fresh Meadows, Queens, when a stranger walked up to him and punched him square in the face.

This kind of unfortunate incident happens occasionally on the streets of New York City, but in this case an important detail had broader implications: the man arrested and charged with assault gave the police his address as 61-27 186th St., a hotel around the corner from the bank.

That hotel houses inmates released from Rikers Island and state prisons, as it has since the start of the pandemic as part of the city’s effort to curb the spread of the virus. The arrestee was one of those former inmates.

And he was not the only one. Last year, 42 individuals arrested for a wide variety of crimes gave 61-27 186th St. as their address, according to a search of NYPD records performed by Deputy Inspector Kevin Chan, commanding officer of the 107th Precinct where the hotel is located.

Alleged crimes committed by individuals listed at the 186th St. address included robbery, burglary, grand larceny, petit larceny and criminal possession of a controlled substance, according to the NYPD.

“Forty-two is a large number of people who used that address,” Chan told THE CITY. “It’s one location. They’re former inmates. They have been arrested before. I don’t want to assume that everyone who’s been arrested before gets arrested again, but it does happen that in some cases they continue committing the same crimes.”

Residents report an uptick in crime in the area, and a CVS behind the hotel has been hit repeatedly by shoplifters in the last year. Prior to that, the store experienced only occasional theft, workers say.

 

Another cold blooded murder in Forest Hills

NY Post

A hard-working Chinese food delivery man was shot and killed while on the clock in Queens Saturday night — and now cops are probing whether the gunman is a disgruntled customer who had “multiple disputes” with the restaurant over his orders, sources told The Post.

Zhiwen Yan, 45, was on his scooter and making a delivery near 108th Street and 67th Drive in Forest Hills around 9:30 p.m. when he was blasted once in the chest and mortally wounded, police said on Sunday.

Sources said cops are now eying a 50-year-old customer who has an ongoing beef with staff at Great Wall on Queens Boulevard, allegedly menacing them with a gun in January and twice vandalizing their vehicles.

One witness told police the angry customer drove off from the Forest Hills restaurant in an older model Lexus RX3 SUV after one encounter — the same type of vehicle spotted fleeing the scene of Saturday’s shooting, the sources said.

One less friend at the QNS

 

 Queens Ledger

Former New York City Councilwoman Elizabeth Crowley has stepped down from her position as chairperson of the board of Friends of the QNS, a nonprofit organization that she founded to advocate for expanded commuter rail-based transit across the borough.

Crowley said her decision to step down was made in order to focus fully on her candidacy for New York State Senate District 17.

“It has been an honor to serve as the chair of Friends of the QNS,” Crowley said.

The “QNS” proposal was introduced by Crowley to improve transit within her former Council district. Specifically, the plan sought to revive the former Lower Montauk rail line, which stretches nine miles from Hunters Point in Long Island City, through central Queens neighborhoods including Middle Village, Glendale, and Ridgewood, to the Jamaica hub.

This portion of central Queens is commonly referred to as one of the City’s “transit deserts,” since no passenger rail currently serves many of these neighborhoods.

In a 2018 report from the Department of Transportation, it was confirmed that the defunct rail line could be converted to include passenger service at a fraction of the cost of other major expansion projects like Manhattan’s 2nd Avenue Subway.

The New York State Senate district seat that Crowley is currently running for would include a vast majority of the former Lower Montauk Line within its boundaries. It was recently created by state lawmakers following the 2020 Census and will include Glendale, Maspeth, Richmond Hill, Ridgewood, Woodhaven, Long Island City, Sunnyside, Woodside, Ozone Park, and Greenpoint in Brooklyn within its boundaries.

But while Crowley is stepping down from her position as the board’s chair, she said she vows to continue to advocate not only for the QNS rail but for a greenway along the QNS line, if elected.

“Queens has been growing at a tremendous pace, especially Long Island City,” Crowley said. “For this borough to keep up with its growth, we need to provide better transit to our residents. It’s not ambitious, it’s common sense.”

This proposal to restore the former commuter rail is similar to Gov. Kathy Hochul’s 14-mile IBX plan, which seeks to add a train line from Bay Ridge in Brooklyn to Woodside, Queens.

Both use existing, underused train rights-of-way, converting them to passenger service from strictly freight service.

Crowley also indicated that she would work to include a dedicated bike lane running parallel to QNS, because “an intolerable” number of bicycle accidents and fatalities have been occurring in recent years.

“If we want people to use alternative transportation, we want them to feel safe as they do so. A slightly revised QNS ‘rail and trail’ plan would help that goal,” Crowley said.

Fake doctors have been making vaccination advisories at the Department of Health

How the left is losing me 

Toggling seamlessly between bikini and lab coat, Dr. Risa Hoshino’s Instagram persona embodied the millennial feminist: a pediatrician treating covid patients on the front lines who could still show off her body and build her profile as a lifestyle influencer. A vaccine advocate who collaborates with nationally renowned physicians, yet also finds time to talk about her favorite lipstick stain. A physician who manages to create science-education content for free in her downtime, then complains about being so underpaid and overworked that she asks her followers to contribute $5 each to her personal “coffee fund” (hundreds of her followers obliged).

After Dr. Hoshino unsurprisingly grew her Instagram to 113,000 followers in a year-and-a-half, Medical Marketing + Media  dubbed her one of “The top 12 physician influencers” on that platform.  Beckers HR called her a "top 10 physician influencer" and The Scientist lauded her as "a veteran of using social media to debunk scientific falsehoods.”

The only problem? She crafted her entire “covid health hero” persona on half-truths and exaggerations.

If you’ve been active on social media during the pandemic era, you may have noticed doctors and public health experts rising from obscurity and swiftly developing large followings.  Posting prolifically about masks, vaccines, and other covid-19 mitigation measures, these physicians and scientists flaunt their credentials including the prestigious institutions where they studied, establishing their credibility and, in turn, their respective brands as serious authoritative voices. A posed profile photo in a white lab coat (stethoscope optional) often helps add a final veneer of gravitas.

These doctors, who mark themselves with hashtags such as #medtwitter or #tweetiatrician, almost exclusively push a narrative emphasizing the dangers of Covid-19 infection, even among children who are statistically at very low risk.  At the same time, their social media posts minimize any potential harms or side effects from either non-pharmaceutical interventions – such school closures or masking toddlers –  or vaccines.  

A corporate media invested in promoting a government public health narrative plagued by inconsistent messaging, combined with an ever-growing reliance on smartphones and other devices, created a perfect environment for these social media medical personalities to thrive.

Enter the Instagram Doctor, MD:  Youthful, often conventionally attractive, always prepared to answer your questions. Their social media feeds burst with the concise messaging and advice laypeople craved throughout the pandemic, presented in simple terms with colorful infographics, catchy taglines, and viral hashtags.

Dr. Hoshino is a typical case. Hoshino had been building her brand since mid 2020, focusing primarily on Instagram until March 2022, when Twitter began aggressively promoting her tweets such as the one shown below.  She describes herself in her Twitter bio as a board-certified pediatrician in Public Health and “vaccine expert.” Her posts depict a stylish young physician, exhausted from heroic work treating covid patients on the front lines.

 

Department of Transportation Alternatives only give two open streets to east Brooklyn nabes

 

Patch 

  A new Open Street on its way to the Brownsville Community Justice Center is so far the only car-free street this year in Brownsville and East New York, according to 2022 locations unveiled by the city.

The Open Street — which will close traffic on a Watkins Avenue block in the summer — is the only spot in the two neighborhoods on a list of 150 locations across the city that will take part in the program, which started in the pandemic as a way to give more room for pedestrians, cyclists and outdoor activities.

Brownsville and East New York previously had at least four Open Streets on Blake, Livonia, Williams and Stanley avenues, though studies showed that they were rarely active, likely given the lack of a designated organization to keep them up and running.

Transportation officials did not answer questions from Patch specifically about why the previous Brownsville and East New York Open Streets were not returning, but did say that several former locations were not on the 2022 list because "community partners" who had run the sites did not reapply.

The Open Streets program accepts applications for sites on a rolling basis, meaning more locations could be added as the year goes on, a spokesperson said. The city is working with nonprofit Street Lab to find partners in neighborhoods that have not had Open Streets yet and will offer help to those that join the program.

The city gives $20,000 in funding and a package of barriers, locks and other materials to each nonprofit running an Open Street, according to the department. (Even with the funding, many Open Street organizers have had to set up fundraisers to bring in the thousands of additional dollars needed to run the Open Streets each year).

"Since summer 2021, DOT has been providing full barrier operational support, sanitation, and horticultural maintenance at over 20 Open Streets across the city," the department said. "This precious resource is already being deployed in underserved communities and DOT plans to continue to grow this type of support, which will enable the agency to have a more equitable Open Streets program."

The DOT added that it helped provide local nonprofits and organizations with funding for metal barriers, traffic signs, programming, and movable furniture. The exact hours for each uptown Open Street are not yet set.

"On Earth Day and every day, we are showing the nation how to reimagine our public space at scale and build a greener, healthier, and safer city," New York City Mayor Eric Adams said in a news release. "My administration's commitment to the Open Streets program remains steadfast."

 And 34th Avenue in Jackson Heights has 25 blocks of D.O.T. support 24/7/365 and is run by a top member of Transportation Alternatives.